Excellent work, as usual. Your ability to get inside our minds continues to impress. Moses' feelings are so visceral and true to life that I felt it myself. He feels everything with a childlike intensity that made it very easy to fall into. I think we all had that moment, especially when we were kids, when we thought "Oh my God, did that really just happen?" and then our stomachs would turn and we would panic and want to cry. You took that common feeling and multiplied it by a thousand. It worked very well.

Something I noticed about this piece was that it was more descriptive than your usual work. Usually your focus is decidedly on the characters and the action, and you let us more or less imagine the setting. I think the decision to be especially descriptive here was the right one. Moses explores his world in a tactile, childlike manner, and focuses intensely on little things that might attract a kid's eye - for instance, the woman's bright blue eye. Usually the details he notices are the wrong ones - the ODST's dead eyes, their firmness, what they're looking at, all fascinates him. He fails to appreciate the horror of stripping a dead man of his uniform because he sees only the parts, not the whole - like a kid.

The ending, of course, was vintage Sev. Disturbing, unsettling, and oddly poetic.

Really, really enjoyed this story. Your level of character development, especially, made it come alive...and the direct approach to description. Truly effective exposition here, because you framed it from the main character's POV. The reader never feels confusion, and that simplicity streamlines the flow of the narrative.

I love the flawed MC, and the way in which you accentuated his darker side. The thoughts no one would dare to say aloud were put on the table for the reader to digest, and in a way it was more horrifying than a hundred pages of gore. The psyche laid bare, so to speak. And it all felt absolutely real. You could imagine this happening. The style was definitely your own, and to me it seems most reminiscent of Scorsese. The examination of the human mind and experience through a dirty lens. A snapshot of the best and worst in people.

And you encapsulated the emotions of all the players so well. The victims of the war, the old veteran. And Moses himself.

Bravo, Sev. A great little piece of work. Two thumbs, way up.

~J. D._________________He who does not like Halo:CE is a dirty shisno.

This is evil, twisted, vintage sev, boldly writing the thoughts that we all know about and experience on a daily basis but would really rather not talk about. I have no more to add that JD and Arthur haven't already written about, so I'll just congratulate you on a well-deserved first place in the contest._________________The Elitist Bastard | Writing is the business of professional turd-polishing."(don't take this review too seriously) If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??"